338 



NOTICES OF AUTHORS. 



situations of poor wet till and clay, and even peat- 

 moss ground, where it will be advantageous to plant 

 Scots fir in preference to any other kind of timber; 

 for this plain reason, that no other kind will thrive 

 so well in those cold moist moors. Both I^arix and 

 Abies have a much narrower range of adaptation than 

 Pinus sylvestris. Larch will not thrive in the dead 

 sand nor till flats of the low country, often not in 

 the dead sand and till of rising grounds, in both of 

 which the Scots fir, if allowed sufficient room for 

 side branching, will reach good-sized timber. There 

 is a considerable formation of peat-moss near Dun- 

 more, in which the Scots fir has shown superior adap- 

 tation to the Norway spruce. We have also seen, 

 in the moss of Balgowan, Perthshire, fine thriving 

 Scots firs, many of them two feet in diameter, grow- 

 ing in very moist, rich, mossy loam, — so moist, that 

 although in a rather protected situation, a number 

 of the trees, while young, had been laid on their sides 

 by the wind, and were growing luxuriantly in the 

 form of a quadrant of a circle, with as much as six 

 and eight feet of the stem upon the level ground, 

 affording a curve sufficient to reach from the keel of 

 a vessel to the deck at midships. We examined the 

 timber of several of these, and found it superior to 

 the average of home P. sylvestris. The superior quali- 



